Join Patrick Lonergan as we help entrepreneurs create an amazing business and life on Patrick’s Vital Strategies Podcast. We had a wide ranging conversation covering these critical challenges that entrepreneurs face:
- Why having a 3-5 year vision for your company is critical to creating the long-term success you desire.
- How strategic planning is a process that is best done every quarter.
- Having written down quarterly goals and documented weekly Who, What, When tasks creates accountability.
- The #1 goal of entrepreneurs should be to set the strategy and make sure everyone else is aligned to achieve the company’s quarterly and yearly goals.
- How financial metrics form a key part of strategic planning.
- Building resiliency by scheduling time to do the things that renew you.
- There is both hope and help if you struggle with alcoholism or addiction as an entrepreneur.
- We can’t do it alone. Find people who will support you in your journey.
Transcript
Patrick (00:00:17):
Welcome back to another episode of the Vital Strategies Podcast. I’m your host, Patrick Lonergan, and today we have the privilege of hosting David Greer, a seasoned business coach with a passion for guiding entrepreneurs to success. David’s expertise lies in strategic planning and coaching for entrepreneurs at pivotal stages of growth. Whether you’re navigating a plateau or scaling from a few million to a hundred million in revenue, David’s insights are invaluable. In this episode, we’ll explore David’s unique approach to strategic planning, distilling complex strategies into actionable plans. Using the one page strategic plan framework, we’ll explore the importance of personal growth, culture building, and achieving harmony in your life during the entrepreneurial journey. Join us as we uncover the keys to business success, personal fulfillment, and navigating life’s challenges with David Greer. Stay to the end when the conversation gets real about how to handle the stresses of entrepreneurship and David’s recovery journey as an alcoholic. Let’s dive in. David, thank you so much for joining us here today. I’m excited to get into this discussion about everything from strategic planning and getting our head up and looking where we’re going in our business to really kind of digging down into how to turn that into practical day by day steps that we can execute on the planning that we do from a strategic point of view. So thank you very much for joining us here today. I appreciate it.
David (00:01:45):
Thank you so much. I’m really excited to be here with you today.
Patrick (00:01:48):
Yeah, so if it’s okay, can we just jump in and talk about strategic planning and how important that is? Because I think as entrepreneurs we find ourselves, we grow and then we sort of bump into some of these plateaus and it takes a new set of thinking ideas, thought processes, processes in general to really get us to a next level. So can you just walk us through a little bit of the value of strategic planning?
David (00:02:16):
Yeah. Strategic planning is really making a decision about where it is that you want to take the business and where you want to end up and what that looks like. And I use a particular template and framework, which is called a one page strategic plan. I think that binders with copious amounts of documentation are completely useless, but if you can boil your whole corporate plan down to a single page, admittedly, you got to print it on double sized, sized sheet of paper so you can read it. I use stuff from a guy, Vern Harnish, two books, the Rockefeller Habits and Scaling Up, so you can go read those books, right?
Patrick:
Yep. Great.
David:
And they are filled with useful things. So in the early two thousands, I was an angel investor and I was looking about a hundred deals a year in investing in one, and then I’ve become a part of the board of directors, but all my, and I come from a high tech background, so I have a lot of high tech entrepreneurial friends here in Vancouver, and they all kept telling me about this one page strategic plan, one page strategic plan, you got to go use it.
(00:03:26):
I took one of my young software startup CEOs and Vern Harnish, the inventor of all this was in town, to do an all day training session. We went to that session and he presented an incredibly simple idea that blew my mind away, which is look, three to five years out, where do you want to be in three to five years? What are the key capabilities or thrust? Is it new markets, new products, new services? Is it key hires? Is that some of the capability or do you need bigger plants? What will be required to get you to that three to five year vision? And then work back to what do you need to do this coming year to set you up? You’re not going to get all this stuff done that’s in a five-year plan, but what are the critical things that you need to get done this year to set you up for where you want to go?
(00:04:27):
And then once you’ve set those, what do you need to do this quarter in order to achieve your goals for the year? Now, I joined a young software startup when I was still in university and as the first employee after the founders, and I liked the place and stayed 20 years, grew it into a global powerhouse, and we did strategic planning the way I think a lot of people do it, which is, well, what did we do last year? Can we incrementally make it a little better than next year or than last year and keep moving it forward? And we did that for 20 years and we were hugely successful. I don’t want to knock it. We also, I wonder how much stuff we left behind because we didn’t do a little bit more and we had a relatively stable, we specialized in a particular computer system and it was somewhat stable until the very end and it wasn’t.
(00:05:24):
If your markets are growing at 20% aggregate per year and your business is not growing at 20%, then you are losing market share. But that’s a strategic analysis. You don’t do that if you’re just answering, if you’re going great guns. If the market’s growing, then you’d probably have a lot of demand and you’re probably having trouble keeping up, but you might also still be losing market share. And maybe over time that’s a bad thing. Again, I don’t know. But if you don’t step back and look at this bigger picture and this three to five year vision of your markets and in Vern harnesses world strategy equals marketing, understanding your markets, understanding your competitive advantage, which in a scaling up world is we call 10 x if you’re not 10 times better than you probably have work to do.
Patrick (00:06:18):
Yeah, and one thing you touched on that I think is super important for entrepreneurs is we can have our nose down just continuing to grind. And one of the things we’ve discussed earlier was conscious intention. Let’s be really intentional on where we’re going. Let’s get up and really look. Otherwise it’s like we could just keep doing the same thing over and over again, making some incremental improvements, but is this really where we want to go? I think that’s a really important piece to this whole thing is stepping up and really thinking about, do I enjoy this path that I’m on and am I going to be happy if we get to that destination? Yeah, I think that’s an important distinction there. That’s
David (00:07:00):
Great. A lot of entrepreneurs are like me, we get bored easily, and what we actually thrive on is the next challenge. And so when you just sit there and you operate the business, there’s a certain probability that you’ll just get bored because you’re just operating the business and there’s not new challenges for you to go after.
Patrick (00:07:27):
Yeah, a hundred percent. We feel like entrepreneurs like progress is essential if we’re staying stagnant. And stagnant can be even just consistent growth that can get awfully boring. Let’s do something new different, let’s mix it up a little bit and totally that can also be problematic. The team can be like, stop mixing it up. A little bit of shakeup is okay, but we don’t need reboot the entire company. Well,
David (00:07:50):
What I’ve learned is that if I get everything smooth running, which I am good at doing, taking a mess and cleaning it all up and getting it going, and that’s exciting for me. But once it’s going, I need to have someone else in charge and I really need to get out of the way because subconsciously I’ll end up breaking stuff so that I have some new challenges, can go fix it to go fix. No, I’ve actually observed this about myself. I’ve learned enough about myself to know this is the case. And it’s like, no, you need to go find something new in your life. It’s a new business activity, right, something for most of us entrepreneurs. It’s really what we thrive on. And also a lot of entrepreneurs thrive on that. It’s not so much me, but that early stage where you’re finding those first customers and you’re figuring it out and product market fit and all of that chaos, which most people just can’t handle and full of uncertainty, but for a lot of entrepreneurs, that’s the fun part.
Patrick (00:08:52):
Yeah, absolutely. Give me more. Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to something you said about cleaning up the mess. There’s lots of, I’d like to talk a little bit about what you see as the mess in a lot of businesses that you come across, because I think there’s probably some consistent issues that pop up for businesses. I’d like to just talk through maybe what a few of those are and then what you do to clean those pieces up.
David (00:09:22):
Sure. I didn’t get to the last piece of the one page plan and the Rockefeller Habits. You do three to five years, you do a year, you do a quarter, and by the way, you’re looking at no more than four to five goals in each of those areas. So one of the things I see a lot is entrepreneurs try and set too many goals for a quarter. So many people have said, you grossly overestimate what you can do in a day and a week and a month and underestimate what you can do in a year and two years and five years if you just stick with it and stick to a vision and a direction you’re trying to go in.
Patrick (00:10:01):
Yeah, there’s some interesting data out there on that point that says if you have five to 10 goals, you’ll accomplish almost none of ’em, three or four. You get a few of them done one to two, your percentage goes up dramatically. And it’s like just focus on the things that are critical to moving your business forward. And that consistent progress will make a huge difference. Yeah, thank you.
David (00:10:23):
So the biggest question I think for entrepreneurs and leaders is what’s the number one thing? I mean, it literally boils down to what’s the number one thing and everybody loses sight of that. I take ’em off site. We’ve come up with the plan, we decide what the number one thing is for the quarter, and then they start achieving the other goals. And I ask, I have my monthly meeting, okay, number one, where are you at on track? Are you ahead behind?
Patrick (00:10:57):
Right. And do you think that’s because the urgent gets in the way, there’s important and then there’s urgent and we sort get sucked into the urgent things of life and the business? Exactly.
David (00:11:06):
There’s definitely that. And I think maybe before we started, we were talking, you were mentioning about habits. So to me, this is a really critical habit question, which I ask entrepreneurs when I’m working with them. We come up with this plan, we know what the number one thing is, and the entrepreneur may not assigned that task, although they’re still obviously responsible, making sure that it comes to fruition. But I’ll ask an entrepreneur, so how many of the best hours of each day of the week are you putting into the strategic goals for the quarter? And surprisingly, number of times will get zero.
Patrick (00:11:53):
From my perspective, if it’s not on my calendar, it doesn’t happen. Correct. If the entrepreneur thinks they’re going to do it in their free time, that time doesn’t exist. If it does not intentionally put on the calendar time blocked, phone shut off, email closed down, it’s just not going to happen. So that’s fantastic.
David (00:12:13):
And then the piece from the Rockefeller Habits is who, what, when? So the idea is you have at the end of a quarterly planning session, you sit down and you create your who, what, when for the next week and the things that you can see over the next three to nine weeks that are going to be critical milestones in achieving your goals for the quarter. And then the idea of a weekly meeting is you get together, you take a few minutes and celebrate the wins and the stuff that’s going well and a positive cultural story. And then you get into debate about what’s not going well. You’ve got the most expensive, most talented people in your company in the room. It’s not about just reading. You don’t want anyone reading a report, you want them debating what’s going on, and then you want the last half to be updating the who, what, when for the next week for the group.
(00:13:09):
And it’s really an art because you only want things in when for the management team that most of the people in the management team need to be aware of. If only two people need to be aware of needs to be on their to-do list, but not necessarily the groups. And then the entrepreneur needs to make sure that his critical items are on there and then he has to make sure, even if he’s not sharing the weekend, I think it’s best if the chairperson is shared around in that meeting. But everyone has to hold each other accountable to doing that.
And you asked, so chaos comes because people are not accountable and also they never write things down. See if you don’t write down a quarterly plan. And then three weeks later, the entrepreneur changes their mind, which they always do some shiny red ball that happened to go by on their way into work then oh, left turn three weeks later turn. And not that discipline and focus to keep going. So the things you talked about keep putting things in your calendar, only doing things in your calendar. That’s a discipline and that’s a really critical habit, but you have to really work to build that level of discipline and habit. It doesn’t just come naturally, I don’t think to most human beings. It’s something where you really have to consciously work on it.
Patrick (00:14:35):
Yeah, and I think were, there’s also a discipline and habit that comes to not just writing it down who’s responsible for what by when, but really that accountability piece matters. And I think it starts with personal accountability. If you’re going to lead your team, did you do follow through on the things you said you were going to do? Basically? Yes. And then I think leading that meeting also takes some skill that can be developed over time too. I think we think, oh, meetings, it’s not hard, but keeping it on schedule, on topic, following up, ending it up on who’s responsible for what is a critical piece to those meetings to make sure it wasn’t just a fun conversation and now we’re missing out on really driving the business forward. I think those things are, I think maybe even underestimated, like you were talking about the discipline of getting it on the calendar. Same thing with running those meetings. Well, it can be a little bit of a challenge to get good at it first. I love the fact that you’re rotating that chairperson around.
David (00:15:39):
And another a suggestion that from both my meeting, practice, meeting practice, coaching practice, always started meeting with something positive like a win because it resets, if you’re going to go dig into the biggest challenge, it helps remind you that she just climbed K2. Even if the next challenge is climbing Everest, it’s like, oh, right, we know how to climb really big, very difficult mountains. And then at the end of the meeting, which is what I do at my coaching calls, is I ask, so we have this management meeting. What I would do after getting agreement on what wins is I go around the room really quickly and ask each person, what’s your biggest takeaway from our meeting today? What’s your biggest takeaway or insight? And oftentimes it’s really surprising to the individuals when they don’t really think about it, they just blurt out the first thing that comes to them.
(00:16:32):
And then for some of the other people in the room, it can be really eye opening to hear someone else’s observation like, oh yeah, they’re right. This was this aspect of the business we weren’t understanding. And this really is a massive insight. And I do that on coaching calls as well, what’s your biggest takeaway from what we talked about today? And it just causes this very 30 seconds, maybe 60 seconds max reflection and often produces these, sometimes what’ll come out is just nothing to do of the topics we talked about, but it erupted this huge insight for an individual.
Patrick (00:17:15):
I love it. And these are just a few observations that I’m taking away from our conversation. We’re on the finance side of things and finance is great and can really help a business move the needle. But from my perspective, none of the finance stuff matters if you don’t have a good culture, a strategic vision and plan for where you’re going, the scriptures tell us without a vision that people perish and it’s like, okay, let’s spend some time developing that. I think I’m hearing you say all of that. So to go to the finance side, how important is it to have all of the finances buttoned up? Do you have some, I’ll just say best practices that you see in all the companies you work for on things that the winners are consistently doing in their businesses?
David (00:18:04):
Yeah, I think the winners are definitely doing the budgeting process and making sure they’re monitoring. The thing about the one page plan is it has a financial piece. It’s the high level metrics. It’s probably only a half a dozen, but it’s like a half a dozen of the key metrics that are driving the business. When the Rockefeller habits in a bigger, more sophisticated company, there would be one person probably from the senior management team, maybe one management layer down, responsible for every line item in the balance sheet and the income statement for that number.
(00:18:36):
They know where that number comes from, they know what it means. They know what’s driving it. I believe culture is driven by stories about behaviors. And so I think that’s all story driven. The business needs to be run by the data. And so a big piece of the Rockefeller habits and work that I do with clients is figuring out what the key productivity indicators are, what the leading ones are, and the financial statements are great, but they’re trying to drive the business by looking in the rear view mirror. They tell you where you’ve been. If it’s a well run business, I would say by the 15th of the month, the entrepreneur should be able to probably within 2% or 3% predict what the revenue’s going to be for the month.
Patrick (00:19:22):
Sure, yep.
David (00:19:23):
Because they have enough leading indicators to know it’s like if it takes time to, if they make stuff and they know how long it takes to make stuff, then they know how much is in the pipeline, they know how much capacity they have for the last 15 working days of the month, whatever that is. And so they can say, this is what we should ship and this is what we should invoice. And that’s when they really get good at it. Those KPIs are indeed very predictive of where you’re going and tell you when you’re off course or not. My former coach, Kevin Lawrence, who is one of the top scaling up coaches in the world, some of the really big, he works with billion dollar companies. So some of the entrepreneurs and companies he’s working with are now working on 10 year budgets. And he said going from five year to 10 year has been just a complete, he says it’s brutal work, it’s really hard work, but just has been game changing in planning for some of the business he’s working with. I don’t know the specifics of that for me and stage status where a lot of my businesses are trying to just get ’em to do a budget and then actually, and not as just an exercise, but you’re doing a budget. So every month you can see this was your plan and how are you doing against the plan?
Patrick (00:20:43):
Right, absolutely.
David (00:20:45):
And as a reminder, entrepreneurs, the number one reason you go out of business, you run out of cash. And so if you’re not on top of your finances and what’s going on and what your bank balance is, then I tell you you’re at risk
Patrick (00:20:59):
A hundred percent. And most of the clients that come to us come to us for a, they’ve got a tax problem, but the number one thing we’re focused on with our clients is liquidity. I’m not going to solve your tax problem at the expense of liquidity. It is, like you said, the number one reason that businesses go away is they run out of cash, they can’t pay payroll, can’t buy more materials, it can get ugly. We work really hard to maintain that piece. I think that’s,
David (00:21:28):
So Jim Collin’s book Great By Choice in the businesses that he studied and he’s incredibly methodical, but all of the successful ones that he studied had five to 10 times the cash reserves of their peers in their markets.
Patrick (00:21:48):
And the way we look at it, it’s like if times get tough, which they will economies go through cycles, and we get caught up in those. And so if times get tough, it allows us to survive. That’s step one, let’s just make it through this thing that we didn’t see coming. And then step two is if we survive, now we can thrive because all of our competitors that don’t have the cash on hand, now we’re picking up their assets for pennies on the dollar. Now that’s when the opportunity exists. It’s like now all of the upside happens on the buy. If I buy it, the business, the asset, the piece of real estate, that’s where I make my money. And it’s like there’s no better time than when the economy’s in the toilet and everybody else is struggling is to come in and pick up those assets
David (00:22:37):
When the great deals are.
Patrick (00:22:38):
I love that. Right. Yep, absolutely. You also talked about, and I love this, so one of the things that I think we see entrepreneurs run into is this, how many people report to the entrepreneur and how to manage that. I would love to think I can manage 10 direct reports, but I think that’s somewhat ridiculous. All of a sudden I am losing track of what people are doing. So can we talk a little bit about how to manage direct reports and how to hand some of those things off as time goes on and the business continues to grow?
David (00:23:15):
I am pausing because it’s like how to unbundle that, so many kind of aspects to it.
Patrick (00:23:21):
Absolutely.
David (00:23:23):
You’re correct. I dunno what the magic number is. It’s probably around five or six
(00:23:31):
And just lines of communication and it’s hard. In the Rockefeller Habits we talk about the, and in other leadership books, the number one challenge of high growth businesses is the next level of leadership. You have to be constantly coaching, finding, attracting, building the next level of leadership, which also means when you look at a three to five year plan and you look around the room, probably if you’re pretty ambitious in your plan, you want to grow at 25 or 30% revenue growth year over year, probably half the people in the room won’t be there in three years. The business will have grown. They can’t grow at the pace that the business is growing, nothing against them. It’s just, and as the entrepreneur, you have to be aware of this and that’s part of your leadership role. The other piece that’s more I guess kind of straightforward is when an entrepreneur, so if we talk about owner founders started a business grew it just as that cohort, what you did, everything you had to do everything.
Patrick (00:24:46):
You figured marketing, sales, production, all of it,
David (00:24:48):
Every damn thing you figured out, and you’re a smart entrepreneur, you’re still in business, so I know you’re a smart entrepreneur, you figured it all out. But now you’re in the growth phase of the business where you’re proven there’s demand for your products or services. Now the challenge is you got to start hiring people who are better than you. And so for a lot of entrepreneurs, that in itself is threatening, what’s my role? If I have all of these smarter people, which I remind them, your role is still the strategy. You have the bigger vision, you understand the market, and it’s your money, it’s your risk. You’re taking all the risk.
(00:25:31):
That’s a huge piece of it. And you’re not asking them to take the risk. So be okay with hiring people smarter than you. And then when you hire people smarter than you, you need to let go. And so a lot of my coaching sometimes is just around letting go and that these people may do it a way that doesn’t look at all how you’re used to doing it and give them concrete results that they need to achieve, like measurable results and let their behavior, let them achieve or not achieve the results, prove whether they’re on the right track and let ’em do it and don’t interfere. Right.
Patrick (00:26:16):
And that can be hard
David (00:26:18):
Actually, considering we,
Patrick (00:26:22):
It’s
David (00:26:23):
Really hard for most entrepreneurs that is really hard not to stick your hands back in the steering wheel and wrench it to the direction you are certain it has to go. So that really requires a lot of personal growth by the entrepreneur to,
Patrick (00:26:43):
I think you said something.
David (00:26:44):
Go. Yes, go ahead.
Patrick (00:26:46):
That’s great. You said something that I think was profound that I want to go back to that a business that’s growing at 20%, 25% a year, you’re looking around and third of the people in the room may not be there anymore because they’re not able to take you to the next level. I think something that entrepreneurs have a hard time with is accepting the truth of the situation. Oftentimes inertia is a challenge, and we just have been going this way. This person’s been my operations, CFO, whatever for the last five years they helped us get here. I’m going. But oftentimes those people hit a plateau or hit a ceiling that they don’t have the skillset to take you to the next level. So can we talk a little bit about, personally, I think there’s two aspects of that. Generally, I love and care about the people that work for me. Absolutely. So it’s really hard to go, Hey, thanks, but you got to go. And so how do we navigate that not just from a, yes, I see the truth of this. First I have to accept the truth. I see the truth of this situation and I need to go hire somebody else to how do I take this person that’s maybe been with me through a lot of the stuff and put them on a path for success, maybe outside of my business,
David (00:28:07):
There is no easy way. It’s a hard conversation. And then if that person also is a friend, if there’s other interpersonal, which often is the case, especially if you brought in a friend who then grew and helped you grow the business, but you just get to that point where it becomes clear that they can’t do it again. It’s not that they can’t maybe get there, but they can’t get there fast enough. They can’t get there at the rate that the business needs to have that level of leadership. And I think you just have to have the tough conversation and then you need to be kind and caring about is there another role inside the company? This person has a lot of valuable knowledge, and I’ve seen very successful transitions where they’ve moved underneath another senior, a new senior leader came in, or maybe it’s in a different department, they went under them and actually better use of their skills or you’ve just really help them to find the next opportunity outside of the company. There’s lots you can do to help them coach them.
Patrick (00:29:20):
And I think that’s a really good point. If we go back to Jim Collins, right? We’ve got to have the right people on the right seats on the bus, and it’s like, okay, this seat may need to have somebody else in it, but maybe we can look around and find another seat for you. And if not, this isn’t going to be a situation where I just kick you out. Let’s figure out a transition plan where you can have time to go interview. I will give you all the recommendations. I’ll make introductions like, Hey, this person person’s been fantastic. Let’s help them along on that next chapter of life. I think that’s an important distinction. So good. Thank you.
David (00:29:58):
I want to go back to the start of how you introduced that topic because I think it’s one of the things I work on so hard, especially with my facilitation clients, is what I call facing the brutal facts. So again, there’s building trust among your senior leadership team. They’re not going to put the most brutal fact on the table if they don’t trust you or the other people around the table to honor it. What’s often true is the brutal fact is that the entrepreneur needs to change.
Patrick (00:30:34):
A hundred percent.
David (00:30:36):
And until the entrepreneur’s ready to hear that, or somehow sometimes we’re hiring an outsider like me as a coach, I won’t know any of that. But over time, as we work together and the situations come up, I can often just gently shine light until the brutal fact is staring the individual in the face. And David, I think I need to change. I think you could be right.
Patrick (00:31:09):
Yes, absolutely. Yeah, no, and I think that’s making a really, really important point. If we think about, I’m just going to call it coaching in general. Let’s use my golf game as an example. I have a very subpar golf game. I’ve got some golf lessons in the past and it’s helped tremendously, but I’m swinging the club what I think is properly, if I thought it was wrong, I would do it different, but I’m swinging it correctly in my mind.
David (00:31:38):
From what you believed,
Patrick (00:31:40):
When somebody gives me feedback, no, this thing is happening and here’s a video of it, it’s like, oh, okay, now I’m exposed to the truth. Now I can start to, when I accept the truth, now I can start making some changes. And I think that is a really important thing in my mind, underscores the value of having a business coach in your life because who’s willing, you would have to have a really special culture where somebody can come to you and say, Hey, you’re missing this thing. And then you accept it and be able to move forward from one of your reviews.
David (00:32:16):
I have worked with entrepreneurs who can do that,
Patrick (00:32:19):
Right? Yeah.
David (00:32:20):
But they’re not a lot of them,
Patrick (00:32:22):
Right? Absolutely. And I think about core values. One of our core values is love for our team, clients and community. And we think about, if I love you as a team member, care about you and want the best for you, I’m obligated to tell you the truth. Like, Hey, here’s something you’re not seeing that we need to work on, so you can be the best version of yourself. And so again, I think that culture can take time. It takes work to build that trust, to be able to speak into people’s lives in a way that matter. And even then, it’s hard to give that communication upstream to the owner, leader, entrepreneur. And if they don’t accept it right away, it’s hard to keep coming back. It’s easy to go down. As leaders, we can go, Hey, you’re not seeing this thing. Let’s work on it. And then when they still aren’t getting it, it’s like, Hey, we need to keep fine tuning. But as entrepreneurs, we can dismiss those things and they’re not a problem. And I think having somebody like you in their lives where we can work on a strategic level and then all the way down to what are things that I need to do personally and professionally to be a better leader tomorrow are really important. Yes. Yes, exactly right.
(00:33:33):
Exactly.
David (00:33:35):
Great. Let’s segue to the culture piece since you talked about culture, because a big part of the Rockefeller Habits is culture. And my belief is that high performing, developing and being very proactive about culture is how you create high performing companies. And my work, when I first work on strategic planning with an entrepreneur, I’ll work with them on what I call a discovery process. The culture will already be there. It’s typically mostly the culture and belief system of the entrepreneur and what they grew up with, perhaps tainted or not tainted, but adjusted by some of the other first hires or some of the early leaders. But I think it’s really important to make the culture explicit rather than implicit. And so we ask questions like, who would you hire again in a heartbeat? And what are their characteristics? Tell me more about why you’d hire them in a heartbeat or Jim Collins exercise is the go to Mars exercise. You’re on a spaceship going to Mars, who around here are you taken with you?
Patrick (00:34:50):
Yeah,
David (00:34:51):
Absolutely. And why?
Patrick (00:34:54):
Yeah, wonderful. Yeah.
David (00:34:57):
And the reason culture to me is really about behaviors. And what I know about humans is that changing a human’s behavior is really hard. Teaching them skills by comparison is relatively easy. I mean, if you need a very experienced computer programmer, then they have to come with a lot of skills. But if they really highly driven cultural organizations, if you do, a miss hire will eject that person like a virus because they’re toxic, they’re disruptive. And I work with clients to try and over time build policies. They often won’t do it at first, but they’ll often do the hiring. But so you interview for cultural fit first. I mean, you might have some filter for the skills, so at least there at some floor that you can live with, but then you really dig into the cultural piece and there’s ways to do that. And open-ended questioning and you’ll fire for egregious cultural violations.
Patrick (00:36:08):
I agree. I think about our work lives. We spend so much time at work. If we’re working with toxic people, man, what a
David (00:36:17):
Life, a grind.
Patrick (00:36:18):
It burns you out. It’s just not worth it. Plus,
David (00:36:22):
When you hire people who all have the same belief system, which is what they have, if they are all operating in similar cultural way, you don’t have to oversee them as much. You don’t have to communicate. We’re going to behave in certain consistent ways because we all share this culture. And so that’s part of what makes it all gel and go faster.
Patrick (00:36:50):
Absolutely. Yep. And maybe this ties into culture a little bit, but we’re thinking about direct reports, we’re talking about habits, we’re talked about the calendar and getting things scheduled. How does the entrepreneur, what does an ideal week look like for the entrepreneur to really make progress week over week, quarter over quarter? I love the quarter as a timeframe. It gives us 12 weeks to really sprint, and then we get another week to sort of refresh our goals and be off and running again. And so yeah, can you just talk a little bit about what those weeks look like that the entrepreneur should have to really drive success?
David (00:37:32):
Sure. I’ll back up to one thing you just said. So a quarter is 13 weeks, and my argument is in 13 weeks, you can get a lot of shit done. And after 13 weeks, if you pause and go offsite and think about it, you’ll know if you’re really off course or not. And there’s still be enough of the year left to fix it. So that’s why I think that that’s a reasonable cycle. So an entrepreneur’s ideal week, 25 to 30% time minimum, strategic thinking, strategic conversations, strategic, working on the strategy, and however that looks like, that might be talking to key customers. It might be talking to key suppliers. It’s not just sitting in your room with everything turned off and you’re thinking, and by the way, walking down by the river or where I live by the ocean and the mountains, that may be a hundred times better for your thinking and being creative and coming up with the next idea. So maybe you need to be doing that at least an hour a day.
Patrick (00:38:33):
And on that point, real quick, there’s a book called Rest and it talks about how the great creators, writers, thinkers, they would spend two or three hours really working on their craft and then they would spend a lot of time walking and that’s where, or just letting their subconscious work while they were painting or doing something else. And that’s where a lot of the great thoughts came to them. It wasn’t the actual production. It was like, okay, I took it to a point. Now I’m going to go just spend some time enjoying nature. And their mind is continuing to work on the problem at hand, and they come up with solutions that wouldn’t happen if they were still engaged in, I’ll call it the day-to-day work. I appreciate that observation.
David (00:39:19):
Really important for me, it’s the shower, it’s sleeping on it, always sleep on a big decision. It’ll be clear the next day whether you’re, you’ll wake up and know.
Patrick (00:39:32):
Yeah, absolutely.
David (00:39:34):
My belief is for any level of the organization, leaders should at least have a half hour conversation with each first report a week, maybe not if it’s not as super high growing because things are not changing fast enough. And I believe leadership, my belief about leadership is my goal as a leader is to make you successful in your role. I need to find out what’s blocking you. And it might be your own belief system, it might be your skillset, it might be the resources that you don’t have access to, and you need to build really good listening skills. Part of the things I talk about in my book, Wind In Your Sails, is listening is not spent 80% busy brain about how you’re going to rebut what the person is saying.
(00:40:24):
Listening is actually hearing their point of view and holding space for it and being open to it and what is being said. And so I’d say in the one-on-one meetings, it should be like 80% employee talking and 20% you talking. And I think this is really, really important of an entrepreneur’s week, which is why I want to talk about it just a little bit more. The other thing is, again, owner founders who grew the business know every aspect of it. So the default tends to be someone asks a question, you just answer it. And so what happens is for your first reports or any other employee in the organization, there is zero motivation or to go figure out the answer on their own. “Hey, just go ask David. He’ll tell you the answer.” And so you need to learn to not give answers and to just give, my biggest thing, my biggest asset I have as a coach is my questions. That’s really all I got is curiosity and questions and get better at asking questions and coach people over time. If you’re going to come to me with a problem, I want you to suggest at least two possible ways that can be solved.
Patrick (00:41:42):
I love that. So that’s my wife. She’s got an organization that has 400 employees, and she was a hospital administrator at one point in her career, and she was overwhelmed by all of the questions. And she was like, it was amazing what happened when I said, I’m happy to problem solve the question with you, but you’ve got to come with at least two solutions before we talk through it. And she was like, nobody started showing up anymore because they problem solved their own issue because they engaged their brain for a second and went, oh yeah, it’s clear what I should do. I’m just going to go do that thing. That is obvious. Yeah, that’s a wonderful, but again, wonderful thing for
David (00:42:25):
Someone who’s used to always just giving the answers. It’s actually, it’s that awareness. You’ve got to start being aware that you’re always giving the answer and you’ve got to learn to stop yourself. It’s another piece of personal growth. At least 25, 30% of your time on strategic work, you’ve got your weekly management meeting, you’ve got your probably half a day of one-on-ones with your first reports. So that probably gets you to 60% of your week. You want to leave 20% of your calendar unallocated is my kind of rule of thumb. So that’s like one day out of five business days. And then we’ve got stat holidays and stuff. We end up with more four day weeks than you think. So anyways, but nominally five day work week, one day you leave flex, I mean, not necessarily a day, but some flex in your calendar to deal with emergencies and stuff that will come up.
(00:43:26):
And then if you own one of the rocks for the quarter, then that may not fall into the 30% strategic. I’m strategic. I’m more the three to five years in the year and the big picture and the bigger picture stuff. But you may need to do block and tackle on a particular goal for the quarter. That’s your responsibility. That’ll easily consume whatever that 20% or so that was unallocated. And as a leader and the leader of the entire enterprise, you have to get out of operating. I’m talking about a business that’s now 20, 30, 50, a hundred employees, right? You got to be doing a lot less operating, and it’s mostly being the orchestra’s director and orchestrating, that’s where your value is
Patrick (00:44:18):
A hundred percent.
David (00:44:20):
And there’s still a lot of value in management by walking around, or there’s set times where you leave your door open, anyone can come in and talk to you.
Patrick (00:44:29):
Yeah, yeah. No, that’s fantastic. And I think just a key point you mentioned there that I think entrepreneurs need to consider is just being proactive with their calendar, looking out three weeks going, okay, I’m blocking off these important things. Otherwise, if it’s like my calendar people can put themselves on there and now all of a sudden I’m busy doing all this urgent stuff, that’s not that important. And then it’s like we started the conversation, I’ve been walking with my head down and I haven’t been driving the direction of the business in a healthy way. I’ve just been stuck in the day-to-day. So,
David (00:45:12):
And if you’re a high tech, high growth tech business, then as CEO, you probably are going to have three to eight or 10 trade shows that you need to attend where your presence just to create belief in the company, especially you’ve got really big, much, much bigger entrenched competitors. So those consume a lot of your time. And again, it’s like, oh, I’m going to have to go fly to Europe to be in this trade show two weeks from now, so you got to back up. What’s that going to do to my key quarterly rock that I’m supposed to be executing here? And what I’m going to do in my absence to make sure, what I’ve found is that when I was Robelle and I was leading in with for 20 years when I was away, the business operated, but it’s like those key strategic projects tended to not, they lost momentum when I either went away on holidays or I went away to trade shows or presentations, work-related things. I would really be conscious of that and try and set it up so things could still happen. People were really clear, this is what needs to happen in the week that I’m away. So that we didn’t just coast if I wasn’t there.
Patrick (00:46:35):
I love that. And I think one thing that I, I’m reading a little bit between the lines, but one thing you’ve not said is work 80 hours a week. I think building in rest is an important piece as entrepreneurs. I see. Unfortunately, we have clients that don’t take rest and then their body will take them out of the game. They’re like, if you don’t want to, that’s fine, universe. Yeah,
David (00:47:01):
Totally.
Patrick (00:47:02):
We will take you out. We will make you sick. You will have a nervous breakdown. You’ll have something that is going to take you out of the business. And again, this goes back to the part where we think we’re indispensable. We can’t delegate things, we can’t, and it’s like, no, we need to be able to go, alright, what are my most important activities? I’m focusing on those. I’m delegating the things that aren’t that critical that can be handled by other people so I can take time and have relationships, have some peace of mind, have some hobbies. I’ve got some,
David (00:47:33):
Yeah. I have a model I coach around that. For nine years I had this coach, Kevin Lawrence, who is a great scaling up coach, but he’s a great human being. He has a great book Your Oxygen Mask First, and he has what he calls his master plan, which is one page, surprise, surprise. And here’s the thing Kevin asks of us, is that we look at our lives in three fundamental areas. We look at our business, career, finances, that’s one bucket. And then we have our life and relationships, our friends, our spouse, our family, and most entrepreneurs are super passionate actually about both of those areas. They’re often very passionate about their kids and what their kids are doing. And then he asks us to do this third piece, which is the part almost all of us miss out on self. And he says, if you want to do 80% of your passion is in your business this year and 10% on yourself and 10% of your family, that’s fine. But again, conscious choice. What’s your passion ratio for those? And here’s my experience personally and observing others, is that we’re super passionate about the business. We’re super passionate about our life, and we literally squeeze ourselves out of the middle. We do not do those things. And sometimes you have to remind yourself, what did I do as a teenager that I really liked her in my early twenties? I’m guessing for you it might be golf
Patrick (00:49:10):
A little bit.
You look behind me, there’s a Lego Eiffel Tower, and I still play with Lego bricks. I think they’re fantastic way to just let my mind work on projects while I’m not super involved in whatever business thing’s going on.
David (00:49:29):
I mean for me it is being involved in sailing, getting away, being on my sailboat. I know of an entrepreneur indirectly who every spring goes and shops for a new motorbike, buys a new motorbike, does one or two road trips through the summer, and in the fall sells his motorbike. And people say, well, that’s really expensive, it depreciated, but this is what makes him work in the spring. Going and seeing the new models going into the shop, smelling the smell of the bikes and choosing which one and getting it set up just the way he likes. And that is the process that works for replenishing him. So again, absolutely no judgment, none. Just figure out what is it. I have another person I know goes to movies with his brother and then he forgets and his brother forgets, and then their lives are not as good. Their lives are just, and this is someone I’ve coached and I, I’d listen to them and I go, when was the last time you went to a movie with your brother? Oh, it was two months ago. Well, what do you think? Time? Yeah. It’s like you could hear it going in the calendar, call my brother.
(00:51:00):
And get a movie date. So it’s finding those things and then making sure you do them. And people say to me, well, that’s so selfish. Well, here’s the deal. If you’re not selfish, you can be selfless and give all to your business or all to your family, but in the end, if you do that forever, you will crash and burn. The only way to be there for other people is to first be selfish for yourself and to make sure that you are replenished physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.
Patrick (00:51:39):
Right. Right. A hundred percent. If I’m not, well, it’s really hard for my business to be, well, it’s hard for my relationships to be well, and let’s just use a business example. If all of the cash gets sucked out of the business, that’s an unhealthy business. It’s not going to last very long. Totally. It’s like, okay, we’ve got to maintain an appropriate level of financial health in this business, and if we don’t take care of it, it’s not going to take care of the rest of us either. And it’s the same way with us. We’ve got to take care of ourselves. And I think this leads us to sort of the next part of this discussion, and I think you can speak with some authority on this. You’ve got some history that you talk about of alcoholism and how you’ve dealt with that. And I think as entrepreneurs, we’ve talked about the stress of running a business.
(00:52:33):
It is not easy. Most people actually shouldn’t do it. Financially speaking, it’s better to just go get a W2 job. The success rate is way higher than running a business. And so dealing with all that stress, if we don’t find a good way to take care of ourselves, it can manifest itself in, we can be workaholics, we can be alcoholics, we can have a gambling problem, a sex problem, a whatever problem. And it’s like we need to find healthy ways to deal with those things. So do you mind just sharing a little bit of your journey and how that plays into this?
David (00:53:08):
So for your listeners, I’m an alcoholic and I’ve been in recovery for some time now.
Patrick (00:53:16):
Congratulations.
David (00:53:17):
Thank You.
Patrick (00:53:18):
Yeah, it’s not easy.
David (00:53:19):
For a very, very long time, I was in complete denial. And so that’s the first really big challenge is at what point are you willing to admit that you have a problem? I was the daily drinker for at least 20 years, and alcoholism is a progressive disease, so it got worse and worse over time, and I had to consume more and more. And there’s even neurological reasons why that happens to us. But I was in such deep denial Mondays, I would go to the local liquor store for the supply for the next couple days and Wednesdays I’d go to the one that’s a little farther away, and Fridays I’d go to a different one because the same person kept selling me that booze. They might think something of me. So there’s a part of my brain that’s doing this. And at the same time, another part of my brain that is in complete denial, and this is the weird thing about mental health and about alcohol use disorder is a mental health problem.
(00:54:29):
It’s officially diagnosed and it’s not a moral failing. And alcohol is particularly problematic because it’s socially acceptable, acceptable. And it’s one of the few things, if you stop eating bananas, no one says to you, why did you stop eating bananas? Here? Have a banana. You know how good bananas are for you.
You stop drinking, why’d you stop drinking? Is something wrong with you? Oh, here have a drink. Like man, which makes it that much harder to stop that coach Kevin Lawrence, I went to my first, we’ve been talking a bit about Rockefeller Habits and Vern Harnish and his stuff, and I went to this event in 2007 to learn about Vern and his stuff and the one page strategic plan. But at the back of the room were two coaches, and I talked to both of them, and one of them made me more uncomfortable than I’d been in a number of years.
(00:55:29):
And that was Kevin Lawrence, who I’ve mentioned a few times in this conversation. And I had tears in the corner of my eyes. And after I sold Robelle, we did a big adventure. We commissioned a sailboat in the south of France, and we took our three kids and we homeschooled them for two years while sailing 5,000 miles from the Mediterranean. But I came back and I did this angel investing. And what Kevin pointed out to me was how completely unfulfilled I was. I had joined this young software startup, and by 25 I was already in trade flow shows, trade flow, the floor of trade shows like giving demos the majority of the demos and selling software and doing all these things that I learned how to do and to try and coach someone. It was taking a year to bring ’em up the ladder. So anyways, Kevin gave me his card.
(00:56:22):
It was by my phone for probably three weeks, and every time I thought of calling him the phone weighed, I don’t know, at least 10,000 pounds. And very, very thankfully, Kevin called me and that started our coaching arrangement. And we worked together for a total of nine years, but we worked together for 18 months before I finally got to a point where on the night of January 26th, 2009, I drank my last beer. And I’d kind of planned it all because I’m a planner and I sent an email. My mode with Kevin was I would always send an email message the day before saying what the topic for our coaching call the next day would be. And I said, the topic of our call is my drinking. And that was the first admission of defeat. And the thing was, I built such a strong trust relationship with Kevin. I knew the jig was up. He would never let me off the hook.
(00:57:20):
And the next day we had a coaching call and Kevin coached me to give a try to 12 step recovery. And I agreed to go to a meeting before the end of the week. And it was a Tuesday of January 27th, 2009, and being the overachiever that I am, I looked that afternoon, I knew I was going to a networking event downtown, a technology networking event presentation. I knew it’d be finished by eight. I went online, I looked, and lo and behold, there was a 12 step meeting that would be a quarter of a block off the road. I would be driving down on the way home that started get this at 8:30. Perfect.
(00:58:04):
I went, and that was my first meeting. And I kept going back and a month or so later, I made that what’s called a home group, which is the group you commit to going to every week. And a couple weeks ago, I was able to take my cake celebrating. We take a cake, which is in our neck of the woods, in our 12 step recovery to celebrate. And I was away when my actual anniversary date was. So just a couple of weeks ago, I took my 15 year cake celebrating 15 years of continuous sobriety. And that home group has been my home group the entire 15 years. And when I took my cake, two of the people in the room were there the night that I walked in. They remember me walking in. And just a few things for entrepreneurs who are listening or anyone else who’s struggling with any kind of addiction, just a few things is I talk openly and publicly about it because I’m trying to reduce the stigma for alcoholism. It’s a mental health disease. What I’ve learned is that no matter where you’re at and how hopeless it seems, there is hope. There is a solution for you if you want it. But what I’ve also learned is that none of us get sober alone.
Patrick (00:59:35):
Right? Yeah. I think that’s an really important thing as guys, I’m going to speak about guys, we like to keep things in. We don’t want to talk about our problems and show any weakness. And I’ve seen tremendous value in having a group of guys that I can be intimate with like, Hey, this thing’s going on in my life that I don’t know what to do and I need some help. And it’s like they can show up and help. And I think you saw that with your home group. There’s people that were willing to show up. If the chips were down and you needed somebody, they would be there. And there was some accountability and there was some structure around helping. Everybody was just moving in the same direction. I think that can’t be underestimated either. The value of our peer group, if everybody in our peer group, the five closest people to you, if they smoke and drink and overweight, guess what? You’re going to be a smoker, a drinker that’s overweight, right? You’ve got to make some changes on those groups of people you hang out for.
David (01:00:36):
And I think today and at least Western society, to have a group of people around you who can hold space for each other and where you can be emotionally vulnerable. I think it’s difficult to find. And then I think as guys, it’s like 10 times as hard to find. In addition to my home group, I found a men’s step group that met every week and read from one of the books of literature. And I have heard, and I’ve been part of that group since about my eighth week of sobriety, and we still meet every week. And the level of emotional sharing and what’s really going on, not what we show on the surface, like what you’re talking about. Right. Really what’s in our heart, what’s really hurting emotionally, and to be safe to, I can share with that group anything and know it’s never going to be used against me. They will honor it. Yeah.
Patrick (01:01:46):
Everybody’s there for you.
David (01:01:47):
Totally. Yeah.
Patrick (01:01:49):
Completely. Yeah. No, I’ve been a part of a men’s group. We do a bible study. It’s been going on for 10 years and it’s the same thing. We’ve done real life together and we’ve worked through things that nobody else is aware of and it’s just been great. And I think there’s also, going back to the stigma around, I’m just going to call it mental health in general. We think we’ve got it all figured out. I go to counseling on a weekly basis. My wife and I have been to counseling. Just again, it’s going back to this coaching idea. I love the fact that I have a business coach, I’ve had a golf coach, I’ve got coaches in every area of my life that I think matter and my mental health and my relationships matter. Why not invest the time and money to go get some fine tuning there? Somebody that can speak the truth to me that maybe my wife can’t speak, I don’t want to hear it. Right. Or your
David (01:02:42):
Wife can’t even see.
Patrick (01:02:43):
Right. Absolutely. Or
David (01:02:45):
You can’t see about your wife. Your wife can’t see about you, but a professional, it’s obvious to them and they help you walk through it and over time to see it. Right. And they got big toolkits. That’s the thing about coaches and therapists is they get fricking big toolkits. Whatever you bump up against, they got, oh, here, let me reach into the toolkit. I got a special tool just for that here, why don’t you give it a try? Let me know how it goes.
Patrick (01:03:15):
Yeah, absolutely. So David, speaking of toolkits, we think about coaching in general and the value of a coach. I could go by scaling up or Rockefeller Habits or any of Vern’s books or any of those business books. But at the end of the day, the thing that really helps is having somebody that can see how things are actually going. It’s a who in my life, not a how that holds me accountable. That’s on my calendar that I have to show up with results on a regular basis. So can you just talk a little bit about how you engage with business owners? I think there’s a couple different ways that you do that, and I think that’s important to talk about. So if people are ready to take their business to the next level, they’re tired of being at this plateau, they can do that.
David (01:04:07):
Sure. I have two primary service offerings, although sometimes I get in conversations with entrepreneurs and we adjust that for whatever they need. But the primary ones are I offer one-on-one coaching to entrepreneurs, which is typically structured as two one hour calls a month plus access to me at any time for an emergency, an instant coaching call where usually in five minutes I can get you unstuck on anything that you’re stuck on. You just paid for that monthly. And I look for a six month minimum. And at the start of that, we help you set up some six and 12 and 18 month goals and what you want in a coach and don’t want in a coach and hope to get out of it. And then I offer a strategic planning service, which looks very different. So that’s always with the entrepreneur and their senior leadership team and requires an initial two day offsite to do an annual plan.
(01:05:07):
Again, I use the Vern Harnish stuff, so it’s that structure and those templates. And then three quarterly, three quarterly, again, one day offsite. I look for a minimum 12 month commitment because that strategic planning piece, you need to commit to the process and you need to really stick with the process over time. And then you see benefits immediately. But the really hockey stick shoot out the stars kind of benefits 12, 18, 24 months in if you stick to the process. Absolutely. And then that one’s priced differently because it’s a different product. So those are my two primary ways that I work with entrepreneurs.
Patrick (01:05:55):
Yeah, no, that’s fantastic. And I’ve been doing business coaching for nine years and I think it’s just a critical piece to business success. So can you give us an idea of what’s an ideal or who’s coaching ideal for, where’s that business from a revenue perspective, number of employees? Where would the strategic planning maybe just walk through those two different offerings if there’s a different sort of
David (01:06:22):
Yeah, so generally I look for owner founders. They’ve grown their business. You’re at least 10, 20 employees. I think a lot of the value I bring to the table is the interpersonal piece. And so I generally don’t coach solopreneurs. It’s always you’ve got people and usually there’s people issues because humans, so there’s always people issues.
Patrick (01:06:47):
Absolutely.
David (01:06:48):
It’s where they are. And then strategic planning, because it’s a more expensive service and it requires a lot more commitment. I look for companies that have got a half a million or a million dollars in profit and are really looking for more structure to take them to the next level and to really accelerate their business and really grow their business. The one-on-one coaching is really anyone. I meet a lot of entrepreneurs that need help and a lot of them are not open to help. So it’s an entrepreneur who’s stuck on something really hard or is in crisis and is just gets to a point, this is what’s like me. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired and my drinking, so it’s kind of an entrepreneur that’s sick and tired and being sick and tired of the same problem, showing up over and over, or really getting stuck in either same or a place in their business. And it’s just open to another perspective. I don’t have the answers. I know you have the answers. It’s just I’m there to help you find them and to give you perspectives that maybe you’ve never been able to see about yourself and your business. Sometimes I tell people about themselves in their business and they’re shocked to me. It’s just patently obvious by the success that they have that this is true.
(01:08:13):
But I say it them out loud and they just pause. That’s not who I am.
Patrick (01:08:22):
And that goes back to our conversation about accepting the truth. Am I willing to accept the truth of this situation? And sometimes we’re just not and that’s okay. We’ll just continue to live in that pain. Right? Right.
David (01:08:34):
Absolutely. That’s okay. But sometimes we get open to new possibilities and once we’re open to new possibilities, then almost anything is possible.
Patrick (01:08:46):
Yeah. I love it. David, this has been a fantastic conversation. I’ve loved everything about strategic planning culture, even to the inner game that is taking place with all of us entrepreneurs and how we deal with that in either a healthy ways or unhealthy ways. And so I do appreciate that. What’s the best way for people to connect with you if they’re looking for the strategic coaching? How should people connect?
David (01:09:13):
Easiest my website, so it’s coachdjgreer.com, so it’s coach D as in David, J as in james greer.com. If you Google coach David Greer, pretty good chance I’ll be in the top five there and every webpage on my website has my email address and it has my phone number. Email me, just reach out so your listeners know. I will always do a one hour no charge coaching call.
Patrick:
Fantastic.
David:
And we dig into something substantial. We have the experience of being together. I really, with new clients, I tell them, try two or three coaches. I want the coach that you relate to the best. And if that’s me, fantastic. If that is someone else, fantastic. I really want what is best for you.
Patrick (01:10:11):
Yeah, no, that’s great. And we’ll make sure that all of your contact information’s in the show notes so people can just go there and click on those links or shoot you a quick email. That’ll be fantastic. David, again, I’ve really appreciated this conversation and we might have to do this again soon just to dig deeper into some of these topics. So thanks a lot,
David (01:10:31):
Patrick. Thanks so much. It has just been a joy to spend time with you here today. Thanks so much.
Patrick (01:10:38):
Thank you for listening to the Vital Strategies Podcast in our conversation with David Greer. For links to the resources mentioned in today’s show, see the show notes of this episode at vitalstrategies.com slash episode 22 [Unlock The Secrets To Breakthrough Growth]. The tax filing deadline is right around the corner. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the money that you’re sending to the IS and want to pay less tax, go to five minute tax makeover.com and download the free resources that are designed to help entrepreneurs Save up to $10,000 in income tax or more. Visit five minute tax makeover.com to start paying less income tax today. We look forward to having you next week when we have a conversation about a niche tax strategy with Mike McGarry. In the meantime, keep up the good work building your business. We are sure you’ll take away some ideas next week that will help you pay less tax so you can build more wealth and live a great life.
